After having a fun time seeing Children of Bodom a few weeks back, my next planned show at The Chance was none other than thrash titans Metal Church.

After getting my wipers fixed and buying a ticket from opening act Dark After Dawn, I went to pick up my friend Jay who was really excited to see them as their 1984 self-titled debut is one of his top albums. After 45 mins of blasting Demolition Hammer (another ridiculous thrash band) we made it to The Chance. We walked inside, met up with our friend Ray and the first band was just about to begin.

Dark After Dawn

First on were Goshen, NY’s Dark After Dawn. I had bought the ticket for this show off of vocalist/guitarist Maruf. They played a pretty heavy style of thrash metal. For a small local band they were pretty good and made for a fun warm up. After their set Jay left to the Nuddy Bar next door to get food – purposely skipping the next two bands as he had a hunch they would suck.

Christian Gisondi Music

Taking their name from their lead singer, next on were the local prog rock band Christian Gisondi Music. This band was awful. The members were all good players, but the music was all ruined by Gisondi’s obnoxious voice. Before the set he mentioned loving Metal Church saying “They are the only band to have a self-titled song on a self-titled album (Really, you never heard of Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath?).”  Ray and I started to notice Jay made a smart move as the next band wasn’t much better.

Painmask

Painmask are a “tough guy” hardcore band from Kingston, NY. As people who aren’t into that sub genre, Ray and I weren’t impressed. Every cliche’ of this style was present in their sound and it made for a cringe worthy experience.  Jay came in along with my old teacher/All Out War singer Mike Score towards the end of their set from a night of dinner and headbanging to classics by Celtic Frost and Carnivore on the jukebox at Nuddy’s.

Hatchet

Both Jay and I were really curious about Hatchet as we both heard of them and knew they were the band on tour with Metal Church. When it comes to new thrash bands I can be picky (and Jay even pickier) so it was all just a matter of checking them out. Hatchet really impressed both of us and pretty much everyone else there. They had a pretty cool thrash sound with melodeath-esque guitar work. The vocals sounded a lot like Schimer of Destruction which is always a plus. In short, Hatchet washed the bad taste of the last two bands right out of my mouth.

Metal Church 

After all those openers it was time for the nights main band, Metal Church. The whole crowd was curious to whether they will play much off their first two albums (the 1984 self-titled and 1986’s “The Dark”) as they had the singer who joined after the third (1989’s “Blessing in Disguise”).

For some reason most of the songs Metal Church played were from the Mike Howe era. The only David Wayne era songs played were “Start the Fire,” “Beyond the Black” and “Watch the Children Play.” I found this weird because a) I saw their third singer Ronnie Monroe do a solo set in Kingston five years ago where played plenty of tracks from the first album, yet the full band is ignoring it and b) Seeing as their self-titled song is their most famous one, why skip it?

Having said that, they sounded great and we had a fun time seeing them. After their set we left to return to reality once more.